


a place that isn't here

by gendernoncompliant



Series: no place in the stars [1]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, No Spoilers, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, Shades, grappling with mortality (or lack thereof)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27514807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: “I suppose it's difficult to explain what it means to be alive to a boy whose grown up amongst the dead.” Nyx reaches out and straightens your laurel. Her fingers feel cool and soft against your temple, like silk. “Mortals are—permanent and finite. Their lives are very short but very full. And the shades are imprints of that old life. Do you understand, Zagreus?”You don’t understand, but you nod anyway—because she is a safe, good thing and when she speaks you want to listen. But you cannot imagine a life separate from this one.The walls of your world are still so very tall.
Relationships: Megaera/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Nyx & Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Series: no place in the stars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013697
Comments: 18
Kudos: 134





	a place that isn't here

**Author's Note:**

> **I've included this in a series of Zagreus character studies, however it functions entirely stand-alone and it's not necessary to read the rest of the series to understand what's happening <3

For much of your life, you think of mortals only in the abstract.

When you are very young, Nyx teaches you where the shades come from. While she speaks, you stare (impolitely, she would remind you) at the back of a shade’s translucent, semi-corporeal head.

One little hand fisted in the silken fabric of her gown, you aim an exaggerated and thoughtful frown up at her.

“Shades can live on the surface?” You ask.

“Not as they are now,” she corrects, patient as ever. She runs her fingers through your hair, and you feel safe with her—safer than you feel when your father’s around, even if the grand hall looks almost empty without him.

“Mortals come in many shapes,” she tells you. “But they are different than here; they are more—ah.” Interrupting herself, she kneels down in front of you so that your eyes are level. The night-dark hem of her gown billows around her as though made from the sky itself.

Chuckling softly, Nyx tuts, “I don’t suppose it’s easy to explain what it means to be alive to a boy whose grown up amongst the dead, now is it?”

She reaches out and straightens your laurel. Her fingers feel cool and soft against your temple, like silk. “Mortals are—permanent and finite. Their lives are very short but very full. And the shades are imprints of that old life. Do you understand, Zagreus?”

You don’t understand, but you nod anyway—because she is a safe, good thing and when she speaks you want to listen. But you cannot imagine a life separate from this one. The walls of your world are still so very tall.

Clinging still to her hem, you ask, “Do they miss being alive?” even though you have only the faintest grasp of what it means to be alive at all. But you know that alive is a place that isn’t here, and you wonder if you might go there.

“Some of them do,” she answers. “Others are more comfortable here, I believe. Others still do not truly remember.”

She tucks her hands under your arms and lifts you onto her hip. Guiding you around the hall, she nods in the direction of Achilles where he stands—ever at attention—in his corner of the House.

“Your tutor, Sir Achilles—he misses much of being alive, I think.” She smiles at you in that soft and quiet way of hers and reaches up to thumb teasingly at your cheek. “I think that’s why he likes you so much.”

You are too young to appreciate this comparison; it confuses you. “But I’m not alive!” You argue, having missed some of the nuance of her earlier points.

She laughs. It’s a low, ephemeral sound that resonates along the marble floors of the hall.

“Well, you are not dead!” She sighs through the last of her laughter. With her free hand, she fusses with your hair, moving it away from your eyes. Her tone grows warmer, but more serious too. “There’s something special about you, Zagreus,” she tells you. “Something that is very bright and very alive.”

She taps the center of your chest. “Keep that fire lit, my child.”

* * *

When Thanatos finally grows old enough to step into the mantle of his godhood, he disappears for impossible swathes of time. Even when he returns to the House, he is always moving, always leaving. He takes to it well: blooms under the newfound responsibility. But you miss him.

You miss him, and in some ways, you do not understand where it is he has gone.

You know the letter of it, of course. You’re not a boy any longer. You comprehend the line that separates the world above from the world below.

But it doesn’t _mean_ anything to you. It’s all words and theory. Most of the shades who wander the House speak of their lives in vague, detached sort of ways—as though it happened in a dream or happened to someone else. Meanwhile, Achilles wears regret like a burial shroud. He talks of the surface only in short, nostalgic bursts—sometimes fond, sometimes sorrowful. Rarely specific.

The shades fresh from the Styx dodge your questions. The shades who’ve lingered for years remember Tartarus more clearly than Athens. Your father hassles you for sewing unrest within the House. So, you stop asking questions and stew in them instead.

Thanatos finds you roaming Tartarus, chiseling the arms off of statues with the pommel of your blade.

His voice startles you from your _very important_ work.

“Your father’s tearing the House apart looking for you,” he drones. You can tell by the pointedly relaxed shape of his posture that he’s aiming for cool and dispassionate. But you’ve known him all your life; you recognize the quiet thread of his amusement.

You sit perched on the granite shoulders of one of the Furies—Alecto, you think, although the likeness is lackluster at best. Propping your elbow on the crest of the sculpture’s head, you level Stygius’s point lazily at Thanatos.

“They’ve kept you busy, the mortals.” Despite your intentions, the words come out sounding petulant.

Than sighs at you. He drifts closer to the feet of the Fury whose shoulders you straddle. Crossing his arms, he has to tip his head back to look at you. (And you have to admit, it’s a refreshing change to be looking down at him, for once.)

“It’s my job, Zag.”

Your feet slowly start to singe the finish on the sculpture’s artfully crafted collarbone.

“What are they like?” You ask. “The mortals.”

Thanatos radiates exasperation. “We should get back before Lord Hades burns the place to the ground.”

But you are broiling with all the questions no one will answer for you. You make no move to leave. “Are they sad to die?” You lean forward, peering over the stone head of the statue and down at him. “Do they beg to stay?”

Again, Thanatos sighs. He glances away. If his foot touched the ground, you imagine it would tap with impatience.

“Most of the mortals I deal in are either very old or very sick. They’re usually… ready. But yes, sometimes they beg. It’s—unpleasant.”

You struggle to relate to the concept; you’ve only ever wanted to leave.

You dangle Stygius toward the ground and drop it. The point sinks into the seam of the stone with a satisfying crunch. “Is it beautiful on the surface?”

Than wrinkles his nose. “It’s bright. And loud.” When he looks back up at you, he seems to realize that it wasn’t the answer you wanted. Softening just a little, he concedes, “I’m never in any one place for long. But, yes, I suppose it can be charming, in its own way.”

It occurs to you—shamefully, for the first time—that even the most forgiving corners of the Underworld often lack for creature comforts. Even the House itself sometimes feels too gilded, too cold.

You prop your head on your hand and ask, “Are we doing enough, do you think? For them to be happy here?”

Thanatos seems to consider it. After a few moments of silence tick by, he decides, “I think what a soul needs from eternity and what it needs in life are different.”

“And what happens when you live for an eternity?”

He casts you a look that lands awfully close to pity. He reaches out a hand to you, to help you down from the statue’s back. His fingers are cool to the touch and smooth, like granite.

His voice pitched soft and kind, he answers, “You stop asking painful questions.”

* * *

“What do mortals dream of?”

“Oh, all kinds of things!” Hypnos tips as he floats, as though the blanket curled around him were a boat on a calm sea. “Why, just yesterday a mortal dreamt he grew long, taloned bird legs and terrorized his village!” He laughs, all tinny and light. “It was a real hoot!”

This is… not the sort of profound answer you were expecting.

“Get it?” Hypnos prompts eagerly. He peeks out from under his eye mask. “Hoot? Like an owl? ‘Cause of the legs?”

“Yes, very clever, Hypnos,” you mumble, as earnestly as you can, all while trying to stamp down on your own ill-placed frustration.

Lilting to one side, Hypnos cheerfully comments, “You sound disappointed, Prince!”

“Yes, well, I suppose I was hoping their dreams would be more—I don’t know. Mundane.” If you’re honest with yourself, you don’t really know what it was you were hoping for. You were hoping for some kind of answer, some window into the world above. But you doubt you could recognize it even if you saw it. How could you measure the truth of dreams about a life you’ve never had?

Hypnos titters with knowing laughter. “People don’t dream about the things that they have,” he corrects. “They dream about the things they want to have. Or _don’t_ want to have! Like bird legs! I don’t think that guy wanted those.”

It’s no wonder, then, that (on the rare occasions you allow yourself to sleep) you are always dreaming of places you’ve never seen.

People don’t dream of the things that they have.

* * *

“This obsession you have with the shades is a bad look on you.”

You’re not sure how long it’s been since you and Meg broke things off; time means little in a place that never runs out of it. Still, it’s been long enough for her to talk to you again but not so long as to take away the sting.

“You’re biased,” you argue, with as much levity to your voice as you can muster, given the circumstances. “All the shades you know are liars and cheats.”

“And all the ones you know are husks,” she bites back. The flare of frustration disappears as quickly as it sparked. She resettles herself, leaning against the counter. Puffing out an exasperated sigh, she says, “They’re just footprints in the sand, Zag. The longer they stay here, the fainter they get.”

She nods at a cluster of shades huddled in the corner of the lounge. “Half of them don’t even remember their own names,” she says. Straightening up, she presses the heel of her whip against the center of your chest. “Let it go, Zagreus.”

It’s not a fight, exactly. You had enough of those when everything fell apart to know the difference. But it still frustrates you to have to defend yourself.

“Their world is so different from ours, Meg,” you insist. You lean into the weight of her whip instead of away from it and she narrows her eyes at you.

Meg holds her ground and your gaze for an uncomfortable length of time. Finally, though, she steps back and shakes her head.

“You don’t care about the mortals or the surface,” she says. “You just want to go somewhere your father isn’t.”

In the moment, you struggle to decide if it cuts so deeply because she’s right or because she isn’t.

* * *

You fight to the surface for your mother, first and foremost. You fight for the chance to know her, to ask her why she left. (To ask her _how_ she left, when the Underworld has never once let go of you.) But a part of you wonders if, once you find her, you might eke out a mortal life for yourself, there. Something humble and quiet, away from the prying eyes of Olympus and the grasping hands of Erebus.

You’ll never know true mortality, but you might wear it for a while: spend a few millennia surrounded by the bustle of mankind and their very full, very short lives.

Other gods star in great and impossible mythologies. They slay monsters, woo mortals, drag the very sun through the sky. They start wars and end them. They unstitch the edges of the universe and let out the seams. People call them gods for a reason.

For all your immortality, you feel more kinship with the shades than with your cousins on Olympus.

No one builds temples to you.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! I love doing these little character studies and would be delighted to know what you thought! :)


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